Simon Torp

The organisation of integrated communications: toward flexible integration

Purpose – Marketing organisations increasingly talk about the importance of integrating their communications, of aligning symbols, messages, procedures and behaviours across formal organisational boundaries. Often this implies tighter central control over communications and other organisational processes. This paper sets out to discuss potential negative consequences of such tight control in terms of organisational incapability to react to market changes in increasingly fluid environments due to a loss of sufficient corporate complexity and diversity.Design/methodology/approach – In response, a flexible integration approach that draws attention to the handling of difference and variety within the context of an integrated communications project is articulated. The paper proposes a framework that balances centralisation and decentralisation through attention to dimensions of endogenous control, tight and loose couplings, networks, and common process rules.Findings – The paper demonstrated that, in order to ...

Integrated marketing communication and postmodernity: an odd couple?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that, under conditions of postmodernity, the market is too complex to be responded to with an IMC‐framework. While the desire of IMC scholars and practitioners to reinstate order and predictability in an increasingly disordered and fragmented world is understandable, such a mission may be misguided. The paper seeks to discuss the possibility that such attempts instead precipitate the production of complexity of an even more unpredictable nature.Design/methodology/approach – The paper proceeds through a critical juxtaposition of postmodernity and IMC, arguing that the latter – with its ambition to impose order and control – fails to understand important dimensions of contemporary markets.Findings – Rather than imposing a monological and hegemonic identity on markets and organizations – an identity that will unavoidably be challenged by consumers and employees – contemporary marketers and managers need to realize that organizational change and adaptabili...

Integrated communications: from one look to normative consistency

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show the diversity within integrated communication and to demonstrate how its scope has been broadened to include virtually everything an organization says and does and everyone who is affected by the organizations existence and activities. In the most ambitious interpretations of the concept the integration endeavour extends from the external integration of visual design to the internal integration of the organizations culture and “soul”.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is based on a critical and thematic reading of the integrated marketing communication (IMC) field. The review covers both theorists and practitioners and those who are in between: theoretical practitioners and practical theorists, since all parties contribute to the creation of the field and the phenomenon that are the object of analysis in this paper. The focus is on semantic and conceptual development in relation to the range and scope of integrated communication.Findings – The ideal of...

Authenticity in management metaconversations

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the development of the theory of authenticity and metaconversations, particularly in relation to managerial metaconversations, and to show an empirical example of what one might term authentic metaconversational management from below.Design/methodology/approach – The theoretical part of the paper consists of an analysis and elaboration of theories of metaconversation and management. The empirical part of the paper builds on a single case study, which was of both the one holistic and embedded holistic type. In connection with the case study structured and unstructured, open and direct techniques of participant observation were applied. Certain parts of the case study were based on action research and consultation methods.Findings – This conceptual paper presents a definition of authenticity in relation to the theory of metaconversations, and demonstrates with the help of a case study that metaconversations can also be created from below, via a bottom‐...